Bosnian Town Scraps ‘Tax on Sunshine’

Local authorities in Tuzla in north-east Bosnia are to cancel a law which forces solar energy generators to pay them to use the sun as a power source.Tuzla’s cantonal government said this week that it would scrap the legislation, which decreed that people using solar panels to generate electricity for commercial purposes must pay the authorities for the use of the sun’s rays.

A similar ‘wind tax’ in Tuzla, demanding payments from people generating power from wind energy, will also be cancelled.

“The government decided that at the next session of the cantonal assembly at the end of this month, these two things will be deleted,” said Zeljko Knezicek, Tuzla’s energy minister.

The sun and wind taxes formed part of Tuzla’s law governing energy concessions.

But local energy experts said that the idea of paying to use the sun was ludicrous.

“You cannot take money for something that is not your property. That is absurd,” Ismet Salihovic of the Centre for Renewable Power Tuzla, told local television.

“First of all, I don’t know who is the owner of the sun. Will someone appear on Earth [and say that they are] its owner?” Salihovic asked.